La Linda's Blog

I played indoor soccer as my 30 year career came to an end. I landed on a team that did pretty well and I enjoyed my first season with them, scoring consistently, assisting in other goals and taking my turn my the goal when our regular goalie didn’t come to a game.

Right before the second season started, I got an email from the captain saying I was no longer on the team. I was stunned, wondering what I could have done poorly or better. When I called her, she had no answers. I called a few people on the mostly white team, but while they expressed their regrets, they were no going to go speak up for me.

This was not the first time I had been dumped. Soccer can be quite the telenovela, or better yet, soap opera, since I was usually one of a small handful of Latinas/women of color. And I was never quiet when I saw something unfair occurring, be it love triangles or substitution patterns that did not match player skills or effort.

I had a fairly large bonfire of rage going that had slowly abated as I dealt with my own responsibility in these situations. So with this particular ending, I spent only a few moments moving from shock through denial, frustration, depression and onward to acceptance. I called Luis at the Bladium and he hooked me up with a team called Las Latinas, asegurando that I was one in a crowd of fierce, competitive jugadoras. I finally retired from soccer after a few seasons on what was, gasp, my sixteenth team. And that doesn’t count my tournament teams.

Can I name them all? Happy to say I can only summon up six besides my last one: Cheetahs, Shooting Stars, Talking Feet, East Bay Breakers, Jammers, and High Energy, but each brought its particular cuts that caused me to (eventually) re-invent my competitive spirit so that new cuts (see tennis-related paper cuts!) sting but don’t burn as did my soccer cuts.

I am leaving my yoga class with my teacher. I chose her because she has a strong yoga and buddhist practice and because, with her there, I will never be the only person of color in class.

We meet a friend of hers as we leave the building and she introduces us.

“This is Eloise. We worked together and then she took salsa lessons so I invite her to my parties and we exchange new moves.”

“Oh, I see by the way you say your name that you have something Latina?”

“Yes, Colombian and Mexican”.
“I took a salsa class and my teacher says I must have a Latina living inside this white body.”

My gut twists as the paper cut slices in me.

“Ok, nice to meet you.” I turn and leave the “we are bonding over your cultural stereotypes” conversation.

First off, I am not one of those people who think your race or ethnicity dictates your ability to dance.

She wants the “Latina” goodie of dancing salsa and thinks she is complimenting me and my people. She doesn’t have a clue to my own struggles to reclaim my inner rhythm and the many salsas classes I have attended with some level of shame for not easily living up to the stereotype she blithely shares.

Is she really wants a Latina body, then she would be part of a group with the highest uninsured rate in the country. She would be twice as likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer. Since Latinas are 1.3 times more likely to be obese, she would be carrying alot more weight on the dance floor, as well as being 5 times more likely to be also carrying the HIV virus as she flirts with her partner.

I truly doubts she would trade her body and health risks for mine, especially if she saw me on the dance floor!

I am in the Southwest airplane, comfortably seated between my then 9 year old twins. I hear a flight attendant’s voice and catch the accent which tells me he might be Latino. I see him stroll down the aisle and assume the classic flight attendant position, seatbelt dangling from his hands.

“We will be reviewing the safety features…”

I do not listen anymore, but I peer at his name tag, leaning forward until I can read the tiny print. Aha! I was right. His name is Javier González.

I turn to my kids and exclaim: “The flight attendant is Latino- his name is Javier,” and here I pause for dramatic effect, “González!” They smile and go about their business – for Teo it is perusing the Sky Mall magazine, for Gina it is looking out the window.

“There never used to be Latinos,” I continue, “or men, for that matter.” I glance up at the other flight attendant and add, “or older women! And… they used to let people smoke!” Now my kids are sitting up, staring at me in disbelief.

“Smoke? Yuck. That’s gross.”

Done with my history and culture lesson of the day, I settle in for the very short flight from Reno to Oakland. I am feeling pleased, both with our weekend visit with family and with the sense of how things have changed since I was their age riding in a plane.

As we’re landing, I hear another flight attendant announce our arrival. “We will be taxi-ing to the gate, so please stay seated.” People are rustling about in preparation for the familiar bell which signals the seatbelt sign is off and they are free to jam into the aisle.

“On behalf of June and Jay, I want to thank you for flying Southwest Airlines”.

Jay? What happened to Javier? Click. Ouch. Sigh. Grrrrr.

“Did you hear her?”, I sputter to my kids, “She changed his name to Jay.”

“Jay,” my son chortles, “why did they do that?”

“Well, it is easier for them to say. You know how people won’t pronounce my name ‘Leenda’ because in this country they say it with an English pronunciation.”

They nod. They have heard me deal with my name many times. Que pena, I think as we squeeze our way down the aisle. So much for that nanosecond sense of progress.

I am at my network chiropractor’s, laying face down on one of six comfortable adjustment tables, listening to gentle healing music. I hear her voice float in.

“I will be at a conference for 10 days in Mexico.”

I breathe in through my nose.

“Have you ever been to Mexico?”, an unknown voice asks, another supplicant in the room of entrainment.

I breathe out through my mouth.

“I’ve been to Baja,” she pauses, “But that doesn’t count.”

My back, which she says is in a “Fight or flight” posture, is activated, my mind automatically digesting the words, culling them for meaning, separating the wheat from the chaff.

First off, why doesn’t Baja “count”? As someone who used to lead whale watching tours there in Bahia Magdalena, I know it as a place lleno de mexicanos who consider their spit of land to be México. They speak Spanish and have their costumbres and feel themselves to be puro Mexicanos, proud of their patria. Is it because Baja to most gringos is the border towns of Ensenada, Rosarito or the far south Cabo resorts?

I breathe in through my nose, concentrating on my healing journey.

And if Baja doesn’t count, then what does count? The more traditional mainland, the airports and taxis to the hotel where the conference attendees will be staying? The beaches full of tourists and residents selling silver trinkets, drinks, hair braiding and whatever else the ‘foreigners’ want? I would be interested to know if Mexicans attended the conference, if Spanish was spoken there other than by ‘the help.’ That is what would count for me.

I imagine that is not what counts for her. What counts is that she learn more of her healing arts in a warm, sunny location where poverty is far enough away to not be a distraction. It is a place to buy inexpensive gifts and drink some typical Mexican beverages and make jokes about the drinking water. It is being pleasant to the locals, learning a word or two in Spanish but not needing to know about their history or current immigration and economic struggles, especially not to accept responsibility to advocate for justice for Mexicanos on either side of the border.

Most of all, what counts is speaking about countries as if they are as foreign to everyone on the tables as they are to you. It is assuming your words will not trigger a tightness in an old wound I carry in my back, making me tenser than when I first laid down.

I breathe out deeply through my mouth and feel my resistance to the adjustments she makes to help my back relax and my heart open. The fight is inside me and so I sink into my own healing energy. I take what I can and leave the rest on the table when I take slow, intentional flight from her office.

I called an organization to register for a Level 2 Love, Intimacy and Sexuality weekend workshop at Harbin Hot Springs, where I attended Level 1 several months ago.

No one answered and then the voicemail message began.

“Thank you for calling. We will return your call as soon as possible. Please leave your name and number, and spell your name if it is difficult.”

I leave a message and do not spell my name. I do, however, suggest they change their message machine.

The return message on my machine calls me “Lina”, and no mention is made of my excellent suggestion.

Hot damn, I guess I have a difficult name! This name of mine, Linda María González, has been through a number of changes over the years. Those people must be right, after all. I am no Jane Doe, although her name could be difficult if one was not familiar with the cultural norm of the last name spelling. She might find herself at the registration table under Dough. Not likely, lucky Jane.

Me? Well, the birth certificate people decided to “translate” María to Mary. My mother confirmed they did intend to name me María, she did not notice the error.

The powers that be have me pegged as Linda Mary Gonzalez, with no accent on the á of my last name. My parents never used an accent either. And my Spanish teachers in high school did not mention that, according to the accent rules they drilled into me, both my middle and last name should have an accent. I remember a friend of my sister’s marrying a man with the same last name and seeing her spell it with an accent mark. Hmmmm. I didn’t make the connection nor ask any questions. Asking cultural questions just wasn’t part of the landscape in my house or in my schools.

I can’t completely recall when I let it sink in that González required an accent. It may have been when faced at my kids pre-school with numerous familias with the apellido González, all using an accent. I do remember my first tentative slashes, the quiet boldness of the act. María was not far behind, and suddenly my name became a simple, endless challenge to the status quo.

I now entered the current, and, shall we say DIFFICULT era that surfaced with what often begins with a seemingly innocuous phonecall.

Not only do I want people to pronounce my name in Spanish without having to spell it in English-friendly fashion, I want accents all over the place, when most folks are still struggling to end my last name with a ‘z’ rather than the phonetic, and I will admit, more common ‘s’.  I began to pronounce my entire name in Spanish, so that both ‘z’s sound like an ‘s’.
All these restorations, if you will, lead to daily experiences much like a roller coaster ride, the highs when a retailer on the web accepts the accent, the lows when they reject my data form, saying “There is an invalid symbol”.  To draw from another language that the U.S. sees as acceptable to learn and integrate, the denouement remains unwritten.

I was promised a better life if I got my degree and spoke proper English.

Paper cuts. We have all had one, if not ninety nine and counting. That imperceptible slice and sting, the almost invisible line on the tender skin of our hand. “Ouch” we think or maybe even say if it is a good long cut.

But we usually don’t go around talking about it. Compared to other bruises and injuries, it is not bound to generate much sympathy. We put a bandaid on it at most and go about our lives, reminded for a few days that we are a little tender when we bend our finger or hold something just so.

The paper cuts I am alluding to are different. They aren’t physical and they aren’t, generally speaking, inflicted by our careless departure from the present moment. The paper cuts I am talking about are generally verbal, spoken carelessly. They are words that remind me that, despite my educational achievements and middle class status, I am still living in a world that denies my cultural differences.

There is the imperceptible slice and sting in my heart or gut, the almost invisible welt on the tender regions of my soul. “Ouch” says my body, recoiling slightly. I rarely say much in response they days, having found the speaker believes they are immune to racism, sexism, classism or any other form of modern, subtle oppression.

Basically, to respond is to receive another cut, sometimes deeper and more painful than the initial cut. To return to the physical paper cut analogy, it is as if the thin paper turns into a sharp knife that is intentional rather than accidental. “No, I am not insensitive or racist or in anyway part of the forces that maintain the disparities in wealth and health in this country.”

So I generally keep the “Ouch” to myself, knowing people still believe in the level playing field for people of color. The cuts you will read about happen exactly when I am in a place of privilege, engaging in activities that I have access to because of my economic and class success. It is exactly in those moments when a cut is likely to occur, because I am more likely to be with white people in particular who don’t see where I or my familia have come from. As one woman told me when I did multicultural consulting and training: “I don’t see you as Latina, I see you as middle class”.

A few years ago I realized that writing down the psychic paper cuts was like putting salve on my physical paper cut. It helped me acknowledge the tender spot without making more of it than it was due compared to the blatant oppression still experienced by those without my privilege. Sin embargo, there are days when the cuts come in waves or are targeted in the same tender spot of an earlier slice and I need to take some very deep breaths and remember we are all connected despite the sense of separation fed by these cuts.

Writing these cuts allows me to look with curiosity and fearlessness at the situation rather than cringe with fear or add fuel to the fire of rage that singes me when it gets too big. I see the human suffering that causes so much separation and I sink more deeply into compassion for my paper cuts so that I have compassion for others on the receiving and giving ends.

Pema Chodron says it well:

“The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.“